Halo: The Art of Building Worlds is 10 years of Halo in one beautiful book

The Halo series is 10 years old this year, and to celebrate, an art book …

Say what you will about the actual story of the Halo games, but there's definitely a rich universe there to dig into. There are the games, yes, but there are also novels, comics, and an anime series. And in addition to the upcoming anniversary edition of the original Halo: Combat Evolved, the series is celebrating its 10th birthday with a big hardcover art book called The Great Journey: The Art of Building Worlds. It's a meaty love letter to fans of the series, filled with plenty of insight into almost every aspect of its design, from cities and characters to technology and wildlife.

As the name implies, The Great Journey is primarily concerned with how the world of Halo was initially conceived. It's filled with detailed sketches and stunning concept paintings. The book's 190 pages are smartly organized into seven different categories, each looking at a specific aspect of the world, from architecture to weapons to characters. As you'd imagine from an art book it's somewhat light on text, but what is there does a great job of making sense of the images placed in front of you.

Aside from a brief introduction and a foreword by 343 Industries' Frank O'Connor, the actual text in the book is limited to a few paragraphs, and sometimes just a few lines, per page. It can be as little as a simple caption detailing a particular piece or as in-depth as actual quotes from the artists themselves describing why they made certain decisions. And this is where the book gets especially interesting. For example, when concept artist Shi Kai Wang explains how he came up with the look for the lowly grunts.

The grunts—well, they were fodders. But I wanted to make them fodders that looked iconic, which is where the backpack came in. Later we used those backpacks as a way to differentiate between variants, and ultimately a fun way to blow them apart.

You probably never put much thought into the design of the grunts when killing them en masse in the game. But accompanied by various sketches showing off vastly different versions of the backpacks and even frog-like creatures that were potential design options for the grunts, these kinds of small notes help put the art into context. They provide neat insights that will be especially interesting to those types of people who like to dig into the lore.

Of course, the reason that the text is relatively sparse is because this is an art book, and in this regard it doesn't disappoint. It's simply beautiful. There are large spreads of gorgeously detailed paintings, depicting everything from large-scale space battles to futuristic cityscapes. It's the kind of book that you can open up to just about any page and find a great-looking piece of art to enjoy. Because The Great Journey encompasses so much of the series—not only the different aspects of its creation but also all of the different games and even the anime—the art is varied and eclectic.

Basically, if you're the kind of person who's interested in how something as minute as the wildlife in the Halo games was conceived, you're likely to get a lot out of The Great Journey. It's pure fan service, yes, but it's very well done, offering not only a beautiful collection of art to pore over, but also interesting facts to make that art more meaningful to fans.

I miss when Halo was the stupidly overhyped FPS game to beat. Yeah, it was stupidly overhyped, but you could tell that the devs put a lot of love into the games, and the sequels actually felt like sequels.

It may not be the greatest game to ever exist, or perhaps even one of the better ones. But its art style and world are significantly more interesting than all the generic modern shooters that are "better." Subjectivity, man.

As a player of the first Halo game I have to admit that it is dumbfounding how a mediocre game such as Halo has risen to command such a huge fanbase.

Do you think those hundreds of thousands of people online are faking it or something?

They probably just don't know better. It's like people using Windows and never having used a Mac. Or people liking the taste of liver.

Remember that Halo came out at a time where xbox games were atrocious pieces of shit, and Halo was slightly better than shit so it garnered a lot of attention from people that had just dropped a lot of money on a game system that had nothing going for it.

As a player of the first Halo game I have to admit that it is dumbfounding how a mediocre game such as Halo has risen to command such a huge fanbase.

I'm with you on that. I just don't think Halo (the first one; I gave up on the series after being disappointed by it) was very good, even though it was wildly popular.

I think it was popular mainly because of the multiplayer, and that it fit into the "Goldeneye" niche for the Xbox. It was a "good enough" shooter with entertaining and functional multiplayer. It also helped that it was the flagship title for the first Xbox, and so got a heavy marketing blitz.

My question is, When we get all these remastered PS3 collections of 3 games for $40, why is 10 year old remastered Halo priced for $40?

'Cause they know people will pay it?Seriously, it's the only reason. You price something as high as possible as you think it will sell.I'm sure there's some people out there that would've probably bought it at $60!

They probably just don't know better. It's like people using Windows and never having used a Mac. Or people liking the taste of liver.

Remember that Halo came out at a time where xbox games were atrocious pieces of shit, and Halo was slightly better than shit so it garnered a lot of attention from people that had just dropped a lot of money on a game system that had nothing going for it.

Wow, really? I'm sure that the Xbox, and Halo, are both just fads, and nobody will buy any more of the games.

All sarcasm aside, Halo: CE was, and still is, the only game that I played for 12 straight hours the first time I played it to beat the campaign. Is it the most exciting game ever made? No. Is it the best visual game ever? No. Is it fun to play? For me, absolutely. Have I found a game, or series of games, that hold my attention for as long as Halo: CE, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, and Halo: Reach has? Very few (among them Mass Effect and Dragon Age series, not much else). Thing is, I have most of the achievements for the Halos that have had them, and other FPS games I've played just don't hold my interest. I have 25 achievement points from Gears of War 1 (haven't played the other two). Got to the Berserker and got so frustrated that I gave up and sold the game. Call Of Duty I have World at War, and though I love the setting and the graphics, the game play just didn't do it for me. I don't hate any of the games of those series, I just don't have fun playing them. Halo is not a game to be taken seriously when it comes to physics nor mechanics, but that doesn't detract from the fact that it's fun to play. If you don't like it, that's great, but why rag on it? If hundreds of thousands of people (including Nathan Fillon) enjoy the game, why feel the need to make everyone agree with you and not like it? Isn't that why other games like Call Of Duty are made, to fulfill other people's visions of FPSs?

My question is, When we get all these remastered PS3 collections of 3 games for $40, why is 10 year old remastered Halo priced for $40?

'Cause they know people will pay it?Seriously, it's the only reason. You price something as high as possible as you think it will sell.I'm sure there's some people out there that would've probably bought it at $60!

Considering it includes new maps for multiplayer Reach, which usually cost around 10-15 bucks, 40 isn't that bad. That would come out to about 25-30 bucks for the campaign, which I don't see as being that steep.

Considering it includes new maps for multiplayer Reach, which usually cost around 10-15 bucks, 40 isn't that bad. That would come out to about 25-30 bucks for the campaign, which I don't see as being that steep.

New Reach maps? I didn't know that! This just went from a "maybe" to "very likely" purchase!

I am on the fence about buying the 'remastered' Halo. I played through the first and second, and wasn't too big a fan of the second single-player, though the multiplayer was somehow slightly better than the originals', too......

But I love art books! Though not a fan of the art of Halo, in particular.

It's pure fan service, yes, but it's very well done, offering not only a beautiful collection of art to pore over

Wow! I don't recall the last time I saw someone use the CORRECT "pore" there! My hat off to you, sir! That is one of those that doesn't seem like it would be right (given the other meaning of pore), but it is!

On topic, I played Halo 1 and 2, and played solo, they were nothing special (I only played the first solo, as I have no consoles). Played co-op, they were fun. The rather mind-numbing "Flood, meet shotgun" became a bit more dynamic with more people, and there is no substitute to playing with friends.

I wouldn't call them GREAT, except that a lot of people play them. It is like the Harry Potter series. For avid book readers, they aren't any special (I believe my sister used the words "They're cute..."), but they got everyone reading them... even people who don't normally read, who found reading can be fun. There was nothing particularly special in Harry Potter in itself, except that it got people reading and it was just good enough that it sparked that, "this is fun!" And I think something similar happened with the Halos. People who don't normally play online shooters found out that the multiplayer was fun, and so they play them.

While the game may not be earth-shatteringly great, enough people played them that the community reached a critical mass large enough to sustain itself and justify its own existance. For the purists, it will always remain good, if nothing special. For those that enjoy them, there's no reason to try to ruin that for them. It's a good game, whether you get your fix from it or not.

... the only game that I played for 12 straight hours the first time I played it to beat the campaign. Is it the most exciting game ever made? No. Is it the best visual game ever? No. Is it fun to play? For me, absolutely...

I think the whole point of gaming is that, taste. It differs from person to person. Last MP game i played was, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, straight 8 hours sometime. I don't expect many of you remember that game

As a player of the first Halo game I have to admit that it is dumbfounding how a mediocre game such as Halo has risen to command such a huge fanbase.

haterz gotta hate.

But you gotta admit that there's a lot of truth there.

You can hate something for very valid reasons.

I think there would be more value in having an "Art of Building Worlds (of Warcraft)". I think that game, as mediocre as *it* has become lately, has much richer world, race, character history.

I don't agree that there's truth there at all. I've listened to the Halo Hatewagon build for 6 years now, and I always just shake my head...

Nobody hated Halo:CE in 2001. Nobody had any reason to hate Halo: CE (other than maybe hating Microsoft...). People at worst said "eh, it's ok". The hatred really only started once Halo 2 came out, and Xbox Live grew popular (oh yeah, mostly because OF Halo 2..), and people started attributing "screaming racist 3rd graders" with the online gaming experience. We love to hate popularity, and it seems we also love to hate games just for who might like them. (Like screaming racist 3rd graders, which are definitely annoying). These are NOT "valid reasons".

Halo IS (and always will be) a great game, whether you liked it or not (also whether you've ever even played it or not...). It was by far the best console multiplayer shooter of its time, at least up through somewhere in the Halo2/Halo3 timeframe, perfecting aiming controls for a dual analog controller in a way that no other game did, and was at the forefront of console multiplayer feature-invention for a good 5 years (online parties, anyone? Thanks Halo 2.)

With regard to the backstory/artwork.... it's true that Blizzard has always had phenomenal backstories/universes. Warcraft had a KILLER backstory long before WoW was even announced. The best Warcraft lore probably comes from all the Warcraft III development, from what I remember....

Halo's extended universe is just as good. Fall of Reach (the book) turned Halo from an awesome LAN game with vehicles to a deep compelling single player universe with cool characters (even if that story wasn't always conveyed the best in the games). An art book like this for Halo is really cool.

I think DICE inadvertently channeled the makers of Halo when they made the tanks in BF3 able to sling friendlies across a map (in normal mode at least). I was playing with some friends on Sunday and while driving a tank and sighting in on an enemy tank, one of my buds thought it would be funny to jump up and down about 20 meters in front of the cannon. My round hit him and carried him another couple hundred meters out, so, man cannon from Halo.

Of course the next time my bud line up, I saw a reddish splat and killed him although the game said he killed himself with bad luck

I would still be playing Reach on a regular basis but asshole friends and the inability to turn of friendly fire kind of ruined it for me. I love the "world" of Halo more than any other game world just for the potential that it has.

My question is, When we get all these remastered PS3 collections of 3 games for $40, why is 10 year old remastered Halo priced for $40?

A lot of PS3 collections are 2 games (both GoW, Ico, Resistance) but I think it comes down to the work done. Personally I didn't enjoy the GoW 1 & 2 remakes. The games just looked weird in so many ways, I think more work could have been done on them. Sometimes they did just look like a higher res version of the old game, whereas Halo it sounds like they've put a tonne of work into it, from what I understand it's the old game on the new engine with redone audio and everything. I can see people getting their $40 from it.

Also, I've never played more than about 20 minutes of Halo, but I do love art books. I might be grabbing this anyway

In 2001 I had no idea how to build or afford a gaming PC. Coming off a PS1 and N64, not able to find an affordable PS2 due to demand issues, and impressed by the OG xbox's superior tech specs, I was Excited about it. I got Halo, PGR, and Munch's Oddyssey. The latter two were good, but Halo blew me away - logical controls, amazing visuals, variation every single time I played through SP - I played that game every day for probably 3 years. Lanfest multiplayer was an absolute riot, with the shit talking and drinking. I can understand how it wasn't a step up for people already into PC games, but for me, it was a revelation.

xwred1 wrote:

Really? I thought it was terrible compared to Q3. That, and them changing plans and not doing the open-world thing a la Tribes, is why I completely ignored Halo for the last 10 years.

I miss when Halo was the stupidly overhyped FPS game to beat. Yeah, it was stupidly overhyped, but you could tell that the devs put a lot of love into the games, and the sequels actually felt like sequels.

As opposed to the stupid onslaught of near-identical crappy wargames (CoD/Battlefield).

I am in total agreement with you here, that facepalm is for the massive fail that those games have become. I remember when the single-player on CoD was somewhat interesting, and now they are just fodder for 12 year olds to swear and hurl homophobic insults at you during multiplayer.

I played the original halo on pc in 2005 or so - it was quite fun. The story was lacking, but still quite nice - the setting and atmosphere were there.

I never played halo 2 (which was only a tool to sell vista) and i've got only little experience with reach and 3 on a friend's xbox. Both seemed ok for console, though - not sure how well it would be on pc compared to other shooters.

I have to say though, i read some of the books and those were great. I stopped at book 3 i believe because it suddenly went a whole lot back, with the second being about reach and how all the spartans died. It felt too much like a retarded reboot :P.

As a player of the first Halo game I have to admit that it is dumbfounding how a mediocre game such as Halo has risen to command such a huge fanbase.

Just read some of your previous posts* and you are one angry dude. You do nothing but complain, you have zero insight, and add no value to any discussion. Get a life, get laid, and move out of your Eastern European parent's basement.

I played Halo campaign and remember a series or rooms, all looking identical, all filled with aliens. You had to fight your way thru and in the last room was a button. You pressed the button, and now you had to backtrack your way thru those same identical rooms again, and they were filled with aliens again. Level design used a lot of copy-paste.

But on the positive side, I think Halo was the first game, or one of the first: to let players do the campaign in co-op, to let a player carry only 2 weapons instead of a 8 types of guns and rifles + a rocketlauncher the outdoors areas were large, you could run around freely. You needed a buggy to get from A to B quickly.

Im also in the camp of not understanding the love for the first halo game. To me it was just another a mediocre FPS. Im guessing the love comes from there being very little competition on consoles at the time, that even the mediocre gets labeled as great

Im also in the camp of not understanding the love for the first halo game. To me it was just another a mediocre FPS. Im guessing the love comes from there being very little competition on consoles at the time, that even the mediocre gets labeled as great